Posted by Lilly | 10 Comments

We-Vibe Has Discontinued the Salsa

About 3 or 4 months ago I was looking up something on the We-Vibe website and I noticed that while some of the icon links to the Salsa/Tango still existed, you couldn’t see the Salsa on their page anymore. Just the Tango. I had my suspicions that this meant they were discontinuing my beloved Salsa. I reached out to them first on Twitter for confirmation, and didn’t get a response. After about a week, I tried Facebook, I posted my question on their page. No response. I let it go for another month or so and decided to try asking again. Yet again, both inquiries on Facebook and Twitter were just flat-out ignored. What is the point of having social media accounts if you ignore people?

Last week then I decided to contact them directly, and sent an email via the site.

Hello. I have tried numerous times to reach out to your company on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. All 4 times I’ve been ignored. I see on your site here that you do not show photos of the Salsa anymore, you just talk about the Tango. Since the shape of the Salsa is the one I recommend slightly more (it is versatile in replacing anything that uses an RO-80mm bullet, for example), I am wondering if you have discontinued it and if so, why. The colors are great!! Many users are not feminine and appreciated the gender-neutral color scheme. 

I’m a sex toy reviewer/blogger and  I’m probably one of your loudest supporters of the Salsa & Tango. I recommend them to nearly every person who contacts me for sex toy help; I tell retailers who want to work with me to carry them, and I compare every other clit vibe (and sometimes even internal vibes) to the Salsa & Tango. They’ve quickly become my only vibrator needed and Holy Grail. Suffice to say, I’m quite disheartened that my simple questions about product discontinuance are consistently ignored on social media. I’d like to properly alert my readers to purchase Salsa wherever they see it if my assumptions are correct. Can you please respond and let me know??

Thanks
Lilly

Their response was quite….lackluster.

Dear Lilly,

Thank you for contacting We-Vibe Customer Care.

We have consolidated our product line and as such the Salsa is no longer in production, though it is still widely available in many retail stores. The Tango and the Salsa are virtually identical with the only discernible difference being the shape and the colour. The Tango proved more popular than the Salsa, though the decision to stop producing the Salsa was not based on gender preferences but rather on sales.

Best Regards, 
Customer Care

*blinks* No apologies for the lack of response time and again on social media sites, not even a “Thanks for recommending our product, glad you like it” half-hearted attempt at giving a shit. Call me naive but I’m surprised. Hell I’ve had a more personal and heartfelt response from Doc Johnson. I think Tantus is likely a bigger company than We-Vibe but Tantus goes out of their way for superb customer service.

I’ll still continue to recommend the Tango, although it will be with a tiny bit less enthusiasm than the Salsa (even though, yes, they are virtually identical, the only difference being color and tip shape). However I will recommend the Tango only because I love the vibrations, not because I love the company.  I’m so damn sick of “girly” shades of blue, pink and purple – the red, black and white of the Salsa were such a welcome change.  So buy up the Salsa when you see it if you think you prefer the color and/or tip shape. At least on EdenFantasys, you’ll be able to tell if they’re truly out of stock or finally discontinued – I’ve shown examples below, the left is the Salsa out of stock til Feb 4th, the right is a Liberator product that they no longer carry.

 

RIP, Salsa.

On that note, I’d love love love to giveaway a Salsa or two to my readers as a proper send-off for my most-loved vibrator ever. If anyone would be interested in sponsoring such a thing, please contact me. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Update:  Standard Innovations Marketing has contacted me and apologized for the lack of response on social media sites and has said that they will be improving their online presence drastically. I really do hope so; in this age, social media is huge and it’s often the place where many people go to first for customer service.  Unfortunately our collective sadness over this discontinuance can’t stop the ‘wheels of progress’, we can’t save it like a petition for a TV show. SI said: “With regards to the Salsa, we too are sad to see it go, but as our brand evolves we needed to make space in our line up for future products. We also appreciate your feedback with regards to colour. This is something we will seriously consider when developing new products.” So I do hope that they continue to expand into more gender-neutral colors. In regards to the Salsa, I will be sent a whole case to give away as I see fit! I’m still sad that I won’t be able to recommend it to all my lovely readers BUT I’m thrilled that at least a few more people will be able to own one. I just need to figure out how best to go about doing it. I’d really like to see the Salsas end up with people who are like me, who have been searching and searching for a clitoral vibrator that has the power and depth we need. I’ve reviewed or owned over 100 vibrators and the Salsa/Tango wins, hands-down, above everything that I’ve tried.

Update 2-7-13: EdenFantasys has it back in stock finally, and until the 15th you can get it 25% off (use couponcode Hot4YOU). Who knows how long they’ll have it or how many they have/can get. I wouldn’t wait.

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Posted by Lilly | 7 Comments

Fucking Sculptures

In the blink of an eye suddenly the sex toy world was treated to what is possibly a line of the most gorgeous glass dildos – Ever. They are hand blown by a little company out in California who named their line “Fucking Sculptures” and have possibly the best tag line ever: “where sex meets art, then fucks itself.”  From their site: 

Fucking Sculptures are individually made pieces of fine, fucking art. Each piece is hand-sculpted, unique and perfect in its own way; crafted with intentionality and mindfulness to invite pleasure through all the senses. Fucking Sculptures are contrastingly playful and heavy, genderless and gendered, beautiful and crude.

I do have a tiny bit of a control issue when it comes to products like glass dildos because they are usually hand blown – whether it’s done by an artisan or in a factory, there has to be an expected fluctuation in size, shape and color. In the past, all of the glass dildos I’ve reviewed were lackluster. They all were pretty enough, and decent enough, but never truly amazing to look at.  The designs and methods of coloring them were all the same: an internal “flower” or stripe coiling through it or just some sort of something in the center. They were all mostly clear glass with some embellishments. They were also all usually made from borosilicate or Pyrex glass. Crystal Delights is an exception to the lackluster; their products are beautiful, too, but they are not quite the pieces of art that is Fucking Sculptures.

Fucking Sculptures dildos are indeed art. Truly, no two will ever be alike. So while this may cause a little concern for those feel like they need a certain size, you are quite welcome to contact the company and tell them exactly what you need. If you see a style and color that you like but are concerned about the size, Maria from Fucking Sculptures assured me that they’ll find you one that matches your needs as closely as possible. When I was looking at the G-Spoon, I knew I wanted a longer handle. This meant that I would get the Large size. I didn’t fully realize that that would also translate to girth. While the “average” G-Spoon is 1.5″, mine is a little wider. It’s hard to measure though because it’s more oval shaped than round. You’ll also notice that my design is slightly different than the photos on the site. While that little curly tip there at the small end means that mine can’t lay “upright” on it’s own like the ones on the site do, it ended up meaning that I had a very unique double-ended dildo. I’ve used both ends now and loved it. That little curly tip gave me very precise g-spot pressure; in fact I got a little too carried away after my first orgasm and kinda bruised my g-spot for the rest of the night. Oops. At first I thought that the width at the larger end would be too big for me, but it was not. The spoon sort of shape combined with the oval/tongue shaped shaft lent an interesting sensation to the mix….and it also made for some noisy self-fucking for some reason. Perhaps I was aerating my vagina. 

The color of my Sculpture is also a lot different than the photos on the site, and I’m actually ok with that.  I accepted the fact that these are basically art pieces and I was open to the experience. The “gold” color as shown on the site for the G-Spoon looks more amber and seems to show hints of other colors. The Gold that I have is very metallic for most of the dildo. If you are near a light source you can see that the glass is more amber colored all the way through but it seems almost “dipped” in this metallic gold. It’s very cool, and really changes a lot depending on the lighting in the room. When I first showed my husband the room was very dim (we’re cave-dwelling geeks and prefer low lighting at night, very low lighting) and he thought it was actually another Njoy stainless steel toy, the metallic looked more silver because there was no light to refract and pull in colors. You’ll see below in a few photos where I managed to capture a variety of different looks. I don’t know if you’ll see quite as much variety from daylight to indoor lighting in their non-metallic colors but I’m betting you will see some differences. 

Fucking Sculptures has chosen to use soda-lime glass as opposed to borosilicate glass (Pyrex is one brand of that type). Maria says: 

Soda lime glass is old school. It’s also the most common type of glass in use today, but most people are not particularly aware of this. Traditional “glass blowers”  that do all of their work by hand typically use soda lime glass. Basically the only difference between the two types is that soda lime glass is slightly more temperature sensitive. You can compare it to a pint glass. If you were to pour boiling water into a pint glass, it might crack. Same with your Fucking Sculpture. That’s why we try to take particular care to inform people to gradually warm or cool their pieces and not to go suddenly from one temperature extreme to another.

Maria has quite the enviable job. You see, Lee is her life partner and business partner and he is the glass blower. They collaborate on designs and then she gets to go test them! I would love to be able to watch Lee make these, hopefully someday they will have a video up of him making one of the Sculptures. There’s really not a lot else I can say about my particular dildo since your particular Fucking Sculptures won’t look *just* like mine, so I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

 

Quite honestly the entire line just eclipses any other glass dildo that I’ve ever lusted after. It makes the designs of Icicles from Pipedreams and even Steele Malone look…..pedestrian. Meh. But these? These are just amazing. Currently these are available from the Fucking Sculptures online store, or you can see them in person if you live near Berkeley, California (I think). She-Vibe.com will also carry some of their pieces. 

 

Thank you Maria and Lee of Fucking Sculptures for providing me with this beautiful piece of fucking art to review! 

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Posted by Lilly | 4 Comments

The Funtoys G-Vibe Split Vibrator

A few years ago a new concept in dildos arrived, called the Split Dildo. The reaction was as split as the sex toy itself. I’ve read polarizing reviews of both adoration and contempt, so when I was asked to review the Funtoys G-Vibe I figured I would land firmly in love or hate. I was a little nervous at first. I expected a lion, however, and got a kitten. 

I’ve never tried the Split Dildo but it seemed that the dildo was not modest in girth, and according to Kara Sutra required quite a bit of pressure to keep the “ears” together and was something you definitely felt. Unfortunately, the G-Vibe is….boring. It looks like a nice luxury vibe; in fact the stylings look a lot like the first Lelo Insignia line. The silicone is even the same as Lelo, with a matte silky finish to it. The buttons are nearly identical to the Lelo Insignia line and the vibrations even remind me of early Lelo and the Insignia Isla – very surface-buzzy and moderate at best. More bark than bite, actually – sure it’s “quiet” but it’s not “nearly silent”, yet even so the noise is more intense than the vibrations. There are two motors, one in each tip. At high speed the vibrations may fool you into thinking that they have potential, if you barely touch the thing, but any pressure at all gives you faux-vibrations. I’ve experienced this before in toys: the Extase Liberte, the original Lelo Tiani, and the Picobong Honi to name a few. It has the sort of vibrations that force you to try the patterns hoping, in vain, that the rapid-fire changing of the motor will give you something that maybe feels like a little more oomph. And in fact the final pattern does. Those staccato every-3-seconds bursts of just enough more intensity end up frustrating you more than anything.  It tells you that the motor might have had the potential to ekk into the realm of rumbly but stopped 2 miles from the border.  Funtoys describes the G-Vibe as having “six modes with changeable intensity from light tremors to intense vibration”. The “intense vibration” part of that statement couldn’t be more wrong. 

The “intuitive controls” are just fairly average. An increase button, a function mode button to change between patterns, and a decrease button. Standard. The buttons are in a good place on the handle, maybe that’s what they mean? There is no button-lock feature, either, like Lelo and a few others. Also take note of the fact that the G-Vibe is merely water resistant. This confuses me greatly. The charging port cover is a silicone plug in the hole – a similar design to Lelo and many other makers of luxury vibrators. Hell, the Lelo Tor II has a completely open charging cover and it’s labeled as waterproof! Be that as it may, I’m not one to doubt what a manufacturer says. But if they want to get into the luxury sex toy game, then they need to make it waterproof. It’s one of those features that people who don’t masturbate in the shower/bath (like me) don’t care about but it doesn’t take away from what we DO like; and there are plenty of people out there who do really enjoy their playtime in the water. Speaking of the charging port, you should initially charge the G-Vibe for 8 hours. It’s said that you will get 4 hours on a single charge, but I would imagine that for at least 2 of those 4 hours the vibrations will be greatly decreased from the pittance they already are. 

The ears might look intimidating, especially if you use both of them internally, but they are very very pliable  and soft. In fact, I’m almost willing to say they’re just too wimpy.  The design is flexible and Funtoys thinks that you can use this design for lots of various methods of stimulation. But the fact is, the vibrations are not enough and the split portion doesn’t do what it should – which according to their site, it should “create a sensation of fullness without stretching the vaginal entrance” and ”Simultaneous stimulation of 2 spots:  G-spot and the opposite side of the vagina” – which, in case you were wondering, the “opposite side of the vagina” spot¹ has a real name: perineal sponge. But since the ears are so pliable and the split requires very little pressure to stay closed, I don’t really feel what the company  advertises. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t aroused enough for the PS-Spot to want any attention but the bit of vibrations that I felt on the posterior vaginal wall just made me feel a little like I had to poop. My g-spot requires a decent amount of pressure OR an intense level of thuddy vibrations, neither of which the G-Vibe could ever come close to offering. 

With my skepticism firmly intact I tried to use this as a dual-stimulator in the traditional sense. While the upward-facing ear did actually touch my clitoris, the vibrations, lack of pressure and slim profile meant that I felt very little externally or internally. I decided to go about trying the other suggested uses Funtoys came up with.Sure, it feels slightly different from a straight dildo of the same width, but I don’t feel any sense of fullness nor do I feel enough pressure on either the G-spot or Perineal Sponge to register as anything special in my brain. Despite this, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to insert. You still have to hold the ears together at the tippy top, you cannot just jam Squidward here into your hole and hope for the best. This maneuvering means, for me, awkward and uncomfortable positioning contortions.  In fact it was damn near impossible for me to insert this. I had to contort and reach to basically shove my fingertips, along with the tips of the vibe, up inside of me to get it started.

Drawn images are property of Funtoys.info

No? Well how about…..

Drawn images are property of Funtoys.info

First of all, my nipples don’t meet up like that. Second, when you try to hold it like oversized chopsticks or the JimmyJane Form 2, something curious happens. It sounds like the same “fatal flaw” that was described by many Form 2 owners – when pressure is applied disproportionately to the two ears OR applied mostly equally and the toy is held handle facing the sky, the vibrators in the ears get kicked out of cycle and almost form their own bizarre pattern. It’s no longer a steady vibration. 

Ok then.

Moving along.

 The G-Vibe comes in 3 colors – if you don’t like pink or purple though, you’re out of luck. The packaging is indeed very lovely to look at, even if it’s not very discreet for storage. When you open up the box the vibe sits in a foam-like cutout – the glue that is used in this bit (my best guess anyway, is glue) has a subtle but offensive odor to me. I can smell it on the vibe despite washing, and I can smell it on the included storage bag. The bag is drawstring and made of white nylon, it feels quite nice. It does have the Funtoys logo, “ft”, which is discreet.  The included charger is USB-only. I enjoy the *option* of USB, but I don’t want it to be the only way. Luckily I have a couple USB-to-wall-plug thingies and that works too. 

 At the end of the day, I just couldn’t get into this sex toy nor would I recommend it. The vibrations would have to be more like the We-Vibe Tango or hell even the Je Joue MiMi for me to even consider recommending it.  Perhaps with truly thuddy-rumbly vibrations that have more power, the stimulation of the G-spot and PS-spot could be felt but as it stands now it was nothing to write home about.  While a few people did seem to enjoy the intense pressure from that Split Dildo, the G-Vibe takes caution to the extreme and instead leaves you wanting something more from the split internal portion. 

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Posted by Lilly | 5 Comments

Overrun By Sex Toys

Last month, I realized something. There was officially at least one sex toy in every room of the house downstairs. And no, it’s not because an urge struck me to just throw down and masturbate in the foyer (or, now that I have it walled off with a curtain, the junk room). A few sex toys migrated to the bathroom and never left once I was done washing them. A few more migrated to the living room and kitchen for photo-taking and then I just forgot about them, sort of. A few were in the bedroom for actual use, and a few were in the dining room and foyer because we were trying to clean up the living room and only got so far. My office, though, it’s truly helter skelter. Sex toys in drawers, in cubbies, in boxes, in bags, under piles. In all of this disorganization I’ve managed to misplace some sex toys, sometimes for months on end. So in preparation for my bestie coming to help me organize and purge I went room to room, drawer to drawer, rounding up each and every sex toy I could find and piled them all on the dining room table, thusly:

There are bowls at the back of the table filled with kegel balls and clit toys; a stack of storage bags; a basket of tangled chargers sits on a chair in the front. You see, I don’t use all of these. Not even close. In fact the toys that I use consistently aren’t on the table because there’s no point in putting them away (My trio of Salsa/Tango vibes and my Pure Wand). You may ask then why I keep all of these. The answer is simple: I think it’s very important to be able to compare newer toys to older toys, cheaper toys, things others might have. So I hang on to everything, almost. There have been likely over 40 things I’ve given away on ToySwap that I hated and figured I’d never need to compare (and then find out I could/should).

Anyways, so I gathered everything up and figured I’d start on it. And then my back went out for a few days without me, and so it waited all there on the table, mocking me, until the weekend. And of course our landlord was supposed to arrive with a repair guy at any given day and he’s prone to absent-mindedly giving me very little notice. Thursday morning I heard the doorbell and knocking and while I painfully went as fast as I could locating a bedsheet and covering up the mess, by the time I got to the door I found that it wasn’t my landlord it was FedEx with a package I needed to sign for. I missed them, so I would have to wait another day for my sex toy delivery. But in the meantime, this didn’t look suspicious at ALL, right??

Yeah.

I know.

The day of reckoning finally came but not until after my landlord and a repair guy were here whilst the dining room table was suspiciously covered with a wrinkly brown bedsheet. As I stared down my pile, the ever-present inability to organize struck me and I didn’t know where to start. So we started by the old standby for going through anything: Keep, Pitch, Give Away. Things I tossed: A few SinFive dildos that nobody will ever want, same for a bullet or two and a pocket rocket that made more noise than vibration. The ugly as sin glass dildo that nearly scared me off of them forever. The Picobong Honi was on my swap list but I finally decided to just toss it after turning it on again and being reminded as to how pathetically weak it was and stupidly designed and I tossed that, too. The painful glass vibrator that EF briefly offered also got tossed after spending months on my swap list and I realized that nobody else wants that piece of crap either. I realized that while the Hitachi and Fairy Wand do indeed eclipse the Lelo Smart Wand Large by quite a wide margin in terms of sheer obscene power, I have no desire for either of those. The bullet-train buzzy wonders are like a belt sander where the Smart Wand Large is like a jackhammer. Sorta. Yes the Hitachi and Fairy Wands would indeed make for a numb vulva for a little bit after use and the high-speed machines feel itchy to me sometimes, especially with nubbly attachments. Both Fairy Wands that I have, and both Acuvibes, are going on the swap list. I figure that nobody really buys the Acuvibe anymore for a sex toy what with the Lelo Wands, the Fairy Wands, the Hitachi knock-offs, the Mystic Wands, and so on, all of them made and intended to be a sex vibrator.

So while some worthless items are being tossed (and the question got asked: Should this glass dildo go into the recycle bin???), many more of them are listed on my ToySwap page. And if any CatalystCon attendees are also on ToySwap, do let me know if you’d like anything and I’ll bring it to Catalyst to save shipping.

But of course this all made me realize that I have a lot of work to do. I have items that I never reviewed, and I really should. I also need to charge up every single toy and get batteries out and really concentrate on arranging everything on a 1-10 scale of vibration intensity. I also need to use my Lelo Smart Wand Large plus Gee Whiz more often. That’s a long name. I’ll rename it “White Gonzo”. Yes. Because yeah, it’s that awesome and I had a clitoral orgasm just from the vibrations that were inside of me. Nothing touched my external clitoris, it just rumbled the hell out of my internal clitoris. Yes, that’s really a thing. 

Shit. Now I’m overrun with pending reviews. 

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Posted by Lilly | 5 Comments

Sex Toy Tablescape

As the dining room table cleared slowly of all the many sex toys piled on it for organizing, little by little things were left behind. The bowls that held tiny clit toys and bag balls soon just held the balls. A dildo ended up in the second bowl and then we thought to combine them like…

well…

I don’t even know like what.  But it would make a great conversation piece during dinner! With the right people of course. Maybe.

But in the filtered morning light it looked more artistic. I think. Or I’m on crack.

 

 

 

 

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